Letters: Hurry up and build a museum, SH2 woes, and climate change

Icebergs float in the water near the village of Ilimanaq, in Greenland. Climate change is ''the very big picture'', a reader says. Photo / Getty Images

Get on and build a museum
I have just returned from a few days in New Plymouth, a city packed with arts and culture to interest residents and visitors alike.

The museum is modern, spacious and resembles a small Te Papa. The still-new Len Lye Art Gallery presents a stunning exterior of silver-mirrored columns and a vast elegant interior. There's a clock tower, and a splendid coastal walkway that stretches from one end of the city foreshore to the other and is home to features of interest, the most notable being the Wind Wand created for the Millennium.

What do we have in Tauranga to lure us into town and attract visitors? Very little. We have the Hairy Maclary statues, and a small, albeit attractive art gallery. And the city fathers wrangling year after year over whether to build a museum and where to put it.

And to the naysayers who can't get beyond the image of dusty dull collections of the past – take a look at 21st century museums around the country and the innovative and exciting exhibitions that are presented.

Right now New Plymouth's Puke Ariki Museum is displaying re-created models of pre-dinosaur creatures from 290 million years ago. They open their mouths and roar, the centrepieces of an exhibition that both instructs and fascinates on life before dinosaurs.

Museums are so creative and instructive these days. Let's get on with ours!

Maureen Guy
Otumoetai

Traffic frustrations

Here we go again. Garrick Rawson (Letters, April 2) has joined in lambasting the "do-gooders" – you can almost hear the contempt in his voice – on SH2 who let vehicles out of the junction with Te Puna Station Rd.

I don't blame him for feeling angry about the "cheaters" who use the back road as a rat run but please, Mr Rawson, consider that many of the motorists wishing to join the highway are bona fide Te Puna locals, including those who have joined the queue after sensibly using the underpass from Wairoa Rd on safety grounds.

On their behalf, I'd like to say thank you to all those thoughtful souls who are courteous enough to wave motorists out of Te Puna Station Rd and on to the highway.

The alternative is side-road drivers becoming so frustrated at waiting that they take reckless risks when seeing even the slightest hint of a gap in SH2 traffic. The resulting accidents are likely to hold Mr Rawson up even longer.

Paul Chapman
Te Puna

Climate change

Neil Harvey (Letters, March 31) castigates Rachel Stewart for repeating the prediction by climate scientists of warmer (and scarier) times ahead, saying the ''weather people'' can't even ''get today's weather right''.

While it's true that the last-minute fine-tuning of local weather is elusive (the bit everyone notices), the forecasters are usually spot on in predicting the overall ''big picture'' for the whole country.

Climate change is truly the very big picture and is following scientists' prediction of increasingly extreme weather worldwide almost to the letter – unfortunately for us all.

Peter Otway
Omokoroa